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Ciaphas Cain
Covers Always Lie. But this time, they're doing it deliberately.

COMMISSAR CIAPHAS CAIN, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!!!

...is the protagonist of a series of novels by Sandy Mitchell, set in the Warhammer 40000 universe. Where Gaunt's Ghosts is Sharpe meets 40K, Ciaphas Cain is something between Blackadder and Flashman in the gothic SF world of Warhammer 40K. Taking a tongue-in-cheek approach to the normally absurdly Grim And Dark 40K universe, the series follows the exploits of a cowardly, self-hating Commissar (a political officer in charge of morale and discipline in the Imperium's army) who has managed to not only survive the front lines of the ultimate World Half Empty, but prosper. Over the course of the series, Cain becomes a massively acclaimed Hero of the Imperium, partly through opportunism, skill and minor heroism, but mostly sheer blind luck. Sent to progressively more insanely dangerous warzones as his reputation grows, Cain actually wants nothing more than to find a quiet place to hide from the fighting.

In short, he's the type of person guys in his profession are supposed to shoot.

That is, if you believe him. The author himself has stated that he does not know whether Cain is the Dirty Coward he presents himself as, or does not give himself enough credit.

Six novels and a number of short stories have so far been published: For The Emperor, Caves of Ice, The Traitor's Hand, Death Or Glory, Duty Calls, and Cain's Last Stand.

As part of the Warhammer 40000 universe, the series involves a large number of the tropes on that page, as well as employing literary and narrative tropes of its own:

  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer (Both Lampshaded and subverted in Death or Glory. When Cain is trapped in a building surrounded by Orks, he remarks that having sewers and storm drains as a convenient escape route whenever he's trapped is not nearly as common as he would have liked. Played straight in For the Emperor when Cain and Vail go into the city sewers to hunt Tyranids.)
  • Accidental Hero (Lots and lots of times.)
  • Action Survivor
  • Added Alliterative Appeal (Commissar Ciaphas Cain. Come on, say it out loud; you know you want to...)
    • Note, 'Ciaphas', is pronounced with a hard 'C', like 'Celeborn'... or 'Car'.
    • Specifically, its pronounced "Kai-a-fass".
  • Air Vent Escape (subverted in Cain's Last Stand, where the air vents are exactly the place genestealers like to hide)
    • Also played straight, as Cain takes the fact it works as a sign that the Tyranids aren't the only threat.
  • Almost Dead Guy
  • Alternate Character Interpretation (Cain, in the self-effacing memoirs the novels take the form of, considers himself an incompetent, opportunistic coward, yet often always displays genuine self-sacrificing and heroic tendencies. Which of these interpretations is more accurate is left up to the reader. It's even Lampshade hung by Vail in the introductory notes for the first novel; she comments that Cain may be giving himself far less credit than he deserves.)
    • In addition, it's HEAVILY implied that Cain is in fact Vail's lover at times. So what exactly the "truth" is really, really unclear. If you examine what Cain actually does without his inevitable 5-page pooh-pooh explanation, he's the biggest damn hero in the entire universe, just one with a perverse sense of humility. On the other hand, accepting his explanation that he's "just lucky/unlucky" and that somehow every single self-serving and cowardly act he does accidentally results in him saving people's lives and looking good at it would make him even more of an aberration in the Warhammer 40K universe.
    • In Caves of Ice, there's a passage where he muses sadly about all the brave men and women he's seen die, and thinks he's probably the last man alive who even remembers them. Then, in Cain's Last Stand, he feels a pang to realize he can't recall the face of a man who died in Death or Glory some seventy years before. Yeah, he seems really self-centered, doesn't he?
    • It should be noted that there are plenty of instances where Cain did something heroic simply trying to run away or to avoid hitting what at the time seems most dangerous area of conflict, without there being the option of reading into his motives. In Fight or Flight he discovered the Tyranid ambush when he tried to run away, and saved Jurgen because his escape route was blocked forcing him to double back. In Caves of Ice, as suicidal as it seemed to go into the Necron Lair to blow up the teleporter, Cain was the only one that first hand knew the Necrons could teleport aboard their ship, so he couldn't necessarily safely escape without disabling it. In Duty Calls he only found Inquisitor Killian and Metheius after Killian diverted Cain's shuttle to their hiding place, because Killian was under the impression Cain was hunting them even though throughout the book Cain was focused on the Genestealers and the Chaos Cult. He didn't even know Killian existed until he met him. It is quite valid to interpret that Cain actually became more heroic over the course of time or that the fact he is interested primarily in his survival without also actually being a coward could lead to a rather unusual set of traits, though neither of these interpretations are quite as strong as that he is simply self-effacing.
    • Except that we have only his word that those were his motives at the time.
    • Of course, motives aside, it's impossible to doubt the fact that Cain is a highly intelligent and inspiring leader and a fantastic warrior when the chips are down.
    • In For the Emperor, introducing Jurgen, he says, "Even after all this time I still find myself missing him on occasion." If this is because Jurgen is dead, Cain may well have grief clouding his memory on top of all other possibilities.
      • This is peculiar, because Jurgen was still with him in Cain's Last Stand, which takes place after he'd already begun recording these unofficial memoirs. For the Emperor must thus have been recorded quite some time after the events of Cain's Last Stand.
      • I believe he began the memoirs after Cain's Last Stand. Vail refers to it as occurring five or six years before the memoirs. But considering the length of their association, it would be surprising if Cain considered a few years "all this time" — so this may just be a Continuity Glitch, and not evidence of Jurgen's death. Just to keep things complex.
      • Nope, it's explicitly stated that Death Or Glory was written before Cain's Last Stand, which means that Cain must have started writing prior to the Black Crusade. Not that this puts the issue to rest, especially given the Anachronic Order in which Cain has written things.
      • Keep in mind the author stated that he expected Ciaphas Cain to be just used in one short story, and didn't anticipate being asked to write a novel based on him. In addition, Jurgen is a rather indispensable character, so it is fairly likely that is just a continuity glitch.
      • Given that Jurgen is being kept around solely so Inquisitor Vail can have a handy, psyker-negating trump card, it could simply be that she had need of him and Cain hadn't seen him in years, possibly as much as several decades, at that point in the archive.
      • She leaves him with Cain so that no one will notice him, and she has no shame about dragging along Cain as part of the cover when she needs Jurgen.
    • And finally, let's not forget that it's possible that Cain considers himself a poor soldier by the standards of the Imperium, which are skewed indeed.
  • Always A Bigger Fish (The resolution of Cain's Last Stand depends on this.)
  • Anachronic Order (The first three books are in chronological order, the fourth is a prequel, the fifth takes place between books two and three, and the six takes place in the W 40 K universe's "present day" long after the events of the rest.)
    • It is probably worth noting that the Cain Archive Amberley is editing the stories from is described by her as "consisting merely of a single dataslate, stuffed full of files arranged with a cavalier disregard for chronology, and to no scheme of indexing that I've been able to determine despite prolonged examination of the contents." So the anachronistic order of publishing the stories is probably far better than the haphazard system (if it can be called a system) that Cain used when first recording the archive.
    • Also, the editing and release of Cain's memoirs is done at Vail's sole discretion, such as expanding upon Plot Holes in previous books (Duty Calls was used to resolve a dangling plotline in Death or Glory).
  • Anti Magic (Jurgen.)
  • Armour Is Useless (Averted. Cain takes to wearing carapace armor under his coat from For The Emperor onwards, which helps on several occasions. Armor has also saved some others' lives.)
  • Artificial Limbs Cain has a pair of augmetic fingers which replace ones he lost in an earlier battle (there is also confusion as to wether they were torn off by a Genestealer Patriarch or desintergrated by a Necron gauss gun). A number of other characters have had other bits replaced.
  • Asskicking Equals Authority (Invoked by Cain in Duty Calls when he realizes that the Battle Sisters are about to be overrun by Tyranids which would have the effect of causing the entire defensive line to fold. He doesn't know who's in charge so he picks the group of Sisters that have racked up the highest body count. He chooses correctly as it turns out.)
  • The Atoner (The Battle Sisters in Duty Calls)
  • Attack Attack Attack (The Battle Sisters in Duty Calls, until Cain reminds them of other duties. And, of course, orks.)
  • Badass Back (At one point in The Traitor's Hand, Cain attempts to elbow a cultist behind him, then switches to stabbing his chainsword under his arm into the cultist's chest.)
  • Badass Decay (Averted in that the Ciaphas Cain novels are more or less the only piece of Warhammer 40K media that convincingly continues to portray Necrons as horrific monstrosities to be feared. Cain has only pulled off one win out of three encounters with the Necrons (and only by blowing them up from orbit), as opposed to his constant success against just about everything else, and they are the one threat thus far that he has adamantly refused to stand and confront, reputation be damned.)
  • Badass Grandpa (Cain himself in Cain's Last Stand. Even at more than a century of age and well into his ostensible retirement, Cain is still quite capable of the handing of asses back to their owners.)
  • Badass Longcoat (Cain. To a lesser degree, the rest of the 597th Valhallan Regiment.)
  • Badass Normal (Cain, and a few others. The man has faced down Chaos Space Marines, Genestealer Patriachs, and Tyrants in single combat.)
  • Badass Unintentional (Cain, very much so.)
  • Bad Boss (Averted. In order to be a more sympathetic and humorous character, Cain is rarely ever seen executing his own men unless absolutely necessary or with very good reason, though he does make several very convincing threats. Cain justifies this by explaining that acting like a conventional trigger-happy Commissar is not a good way to earn your soldiers' trust, making them less inclined to actually protect you in battle. He also mentions many Commissars had been killed in battle by friendly fire, strongly implying that they were murdered by the very soldiers they were overseeing.)
    • It really helps that the 597th Valhallan Regiment has an extremely high morale and relatively high resistance to Chaos. They're more supplied than other regiments because the red tape still thinks they're two units. Other than some issues with integrating in the beginning, Cain doesn't need to use the stick.
  • Bad Dreams (Cain is plagued by these; Amberley comments that Cain often awakens in the middle of the night from them).
  • Back From The Dead (Emili)
  • Battle Butler (Jurgen, though he reaches it from the opposite end of the spectrum than most other examples of this trope.)
  • Battle Couple (Cain and Amberley; Cain and Felicia to a lesser extent; Grifen and Magot.)
  • Bearer Of Bad News
  • Beneath The Earth (Cain often ends up in these types of environments. He's also the perfect man for the job with his "tunnel senses," much to his discomfort.)
  • Better To Die Than Be Killed (Commissar Donal)
  • Big Damn Heroes (Cain, Jurgen, and Amberley do this. A lot.)
  • Black Comedy
  • Book Dumb (A more charitable interpretation of Jurgen, who shows both insight and practical wisdom even despite his ignorance and supposed lack of intelligence.)
  • Born Lucky / The Chew Toy (Cain is dogged by extremely good and bad luck)
  • The Brigadier (Lord General Zyvan)
  • Bring News Back
  • Bring Out Your Gay Dead (Inverted. The implied lesbian couple in Caves of Ice are the only redshirts who survive nigh-certain death going through the titular caves as well as a Necron tomb. They do quite well afterward and are recurring minor characters in later books.)
  • Bug War (For the Emperor and Duty Calls and the introductory short story Fight or Flight are all campaigns against Tyranids and/or their Genestealer infiltrators)
  • Bullethole Door (Jurgen's melta (a weapon designed to shoot through armored tanks) comes in handy for these.)
  • Butt Monkey (Penlan, aka "Jinxie". It hasn't killed her yet. She's even been promoted.)
  • Call A Rabbit A Smeerp (Inherited from the game's setting, mostly)
    • This Troper's favourite is Grasshopper, a game played in the Britannicus cluster with arcane rules, month-long matches, and frequent rain delays.
  • Captain Ersatz (Flashman Recycled In Space)
    • Gunner Jurgen is probably based on another Fraser character, Private McAuslan, AKA the Dirtiest Soldier in the British Army. Like McAuslan, Jurgen is ugly and exudes an aroma that causes revulsion in everyone he meets — unlike McAuslan, he is a highly competent soldier, though he isn't terribly bright.
    • Warmaster Varan is in many ways an Ersatz of Adolf Hitler. A mutant, insecure, psychically-empowered Ersatz. Amusingly, none of the Imperial forces are terribly impressed by his rhetoric, and Varan depends heavily upon his psychic ability to enthrall anyone he can speak with or has a line of sight to.
      • He's even physically the same, mustache, arm gestures and all. (Which this troper found a little much)
      • This Troper doesn't remember Hitler being a demonic mutant with claws and iron-hard scales. Stupid Jetpack Hitler indeed!
      • Those aren't revealed until close to the end of the book. Indeed, there are scenes that on internal evidence alone could not be distinguished from the description of a Nazi rally.
      • This Troper noticed the perfect description of Red Mage armor from ANY Final Fantasy game.
  • Captain Obvious (In The Beguiling: "No wonder they made [Mulenz] an observer, I thought, nothing gets past this guy.")
  • Car Fu (Jurgen's specialty at times. Magot also once ran over a Tyranid Lictor with a Chimera.)
    "Nice driving, Magot."
    "You're welcome, commissar," the familiar cheerful tones of one of my perennial discipline problems assured me, before taking on a faintly puzzled air. "How did you know it was me?"
    "Lucky guess," I told her...
  • Changing Of The Guard (Subverted. Young Donal in Cain's Last Stand is in many ways a dead ringer for a younger Ciaphas, and Ciaphas knows himself well enough to be watch the young cadet. As Cain's essentially upon his last great adventure, the reader might expect Donal to survive and take up the reins as a Generation Xerox. Unfortunately, Donal is badly wounded and attempts a You Shall Not Pass moment, but is captured and mentally enslaved. Cain and Jurgen rescue him, but they are forced to test the extent of Warmaster Varan's mental domination, and when Donal feels himself slipping again he commits suicide.)
  • The Chains Of Commanding
  • Chekhov's BFG: Name one time where Jurgen's melta was brought along that it didn't prove to be an important plot device.
  • Chekhovs Boomerang (Jurgen's status as a "blank" is a significant factor at the end of For the Emperor, and throughout the rest of the books it often saves Cain's life in certain circumstances. In Duty Calls, it serves as a seal protecting Jurgen from being harmed by a Chaos Artifact Of Doom when he picks it up - an artifact which ends up killing the rogue Inquisitor as he makes his getaway once he leaves Jurgen's area of effect.)
    • And in Cain's Last Stand, Cain again uses it to his advantage when he confronts Warmaster Varan. Jurgen's presence nullifies the power of Varan's Compelling Voice, allowing Cain to wrong-foot and defeat him.
  • Chekhovs Gunman (Inquisitor Vail, in the first book, is introduced to Cain incognito at the governor's palace. He doesn't discover her true identity until later in the book)
    • The reader knows, however, since she gives her name and states that she's part of the Ordo Xenos in the introductory notes to the book (at least in the omnibus edition.)
    • Warmaster Varan is first mentioned in The Traitor's Hand in one of the chapter opening quotes, those being his last words. Three books later, his last words are spoken by the man himself. Also counts as Internal Homage.
      • On page 723, for those of you with the Omnibus edition.
      • The context of this quote was changed, though. When it was quoted in The Traitor's Hand it was a rather amusing joke that a villain called 'Varan the Undefeatable' would have "Well that was unexpected" as his last words. When this scene rolls around in Cain's Last Stand Varan was actually gloating at Cain's surprise at discovering Varan possesses powerful mutations, and the fight between them continues for several minutes; when Cain chucks him off a ledge to his death he just screams in panic.
      • The actual line was "That was unexpected, wasn't it?" in Cain's Last Stand, but the original version was explicitly from a compilation of amusing quotes Cain used as a teaching aid. Presumably it was an in-universe case of the Rule Of Funny.
  • Children Are Innocent (Even Cain is horrified in Duty Calls by the thought of abandoning children to a tyrranid attack.)
  • Chivalrous Pervert (Despite his amorous adventures (prior to meeting Amberley at least), he never seems to have gotten in trouble for them; the one time he describes meeting an old flame, she certainly shows no sign of heartbreak.)
    • The other time he met an old flame again, she was (in Cain's own words) "severely hacked off." Wasn't really his fault, though.
  • Clean Cut: In Duty Calls, Cain manages to score one of these on an assassin using his chainsword.
  • Closest Thing We Got (Ariott is pressed into service as the caravan's medic in Death or Glory. He's actually a vet.)
    • That one's also a Shout Out — to James Herriot, obviously. It's even noted that Arriott wrote a book titled All Life Forms Large and Small.
  • Cold Sniper (Sorel, in For The Emperor.)
  • Commissar Cap (Standard Commissar gear, though Amberley does note that Cain would probably prefer a helmet.)
  • Compelling Voice ( Warmaster Varan)
  • Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like (The Tallarns, or at least Asmar and Beije, in The Traitor's Hand, call it blasphemy that Cain had his dropship land on part of a monastery because he was in a hurry to get there to save them. The part in question was the vegetable garden. Then they don't even help fix it.)
  • Convection Schmonvection (Explicitly invoked and averted. Once Cain claims that a plasmabolt missed by a millimeter. Amberley points out that he would have suffered flash burns that close, so he was wrong.)
  • Conveniently An Orphan
  • Cosmic Plaything (Cain repeatedly comments that if the Emperor is actually watching him, He has a sick sense of humor.)
  • Consummate Liar (Even before he knew about Jurgen, and afterward when he's not around, Cain was confident in his ability to fool mind readers.)
    • This may be reinforced when Rakel describes how she, a psyker, only gather the surface thoughts of people with some effort, and to go digging requires a lot of effort.
  • Covers Always Lie (Cain is depicted on the covers as hugely muscled, even dual-wielding bolt pistols while he stands on a pile of enemy dead. In fact, Cain prefers the humble Laspistol and has an enthusiasm for finding cover. The cover artist has said that he wanted to present Cain in the overblown style of the propaganda posters the character so often ends up on.)
    • And about Cain's constitution they don't actually lie. Given that he's one of the (if not the) best swordsmen in the Galaxy: that is, up to sparring with Ork Warbosses, Chaos Space Marines or full-on Daemons and winning, he'd have to be just that strong. And he practices with his sword twice a day for at least an hour (or a couple). You ought to get some muscle mass from that regimen.
      • Hypotheses aside, one of the few things we do know for sure about Cain's physical appearance is his imposing height — Amberly in one book clearly states that Cain was just under 2 meters tall and invariably among the tallest in any group of people.
  • Cowardly Lion (Near-textbook example.)
  • Crapsack World (A more straitlaced example than usual even for 40K, since it's looked at with more parodic eyes than usual.)
  • Crowning Moment Of Awesome (replete with them)
  • Crowning Moment Of Funny (also replete with them)
  • Cult (Vail reports a cult that worships Cain as the embodied will of the Emperor and quotes the Book of Cain. Fortunately, Cain never heard of it.)
    • And, of course, the usual mess of Chaos Cultists.
  • Dangerous Deserter (The first book gets some of its tension from whether the penal squad will decide they've got nothing left to lose and become these. Kelp does. No one follows, and he seals his fate when he attacks Cain.)
  • Deadpan Snarker (Cain, in his comments on other characters. Also, Amberley in some of the footnotes)
  • Deus Ex Machina (A rather surprising and literal one crops up at the end of Cain's Last Stand, with the Necrons showing up to rout the Chaos army and retrieve the Shadowlight.)
  • Did Not Do The Research (Parodied in Caves of Ice; Inquisitor Vail mentions in the footnotes a popular holodrama in which her savant claims to have counted "437 historical and technical inaccuracies in the 1st episode alone".)
    • None of the popular renditions of Cain's adventures contain his aide, Jurgen, who is always by his side. Nor do most of the history texts.
    • Sulla's godawful Purple Prose filled novel mentioned Jurgen, but only referred to him as Cain's aide and failed to mention his name.
    • Cain regularly Does Not Do The Research about local situations when accepting new assignments, which explains why he's always going into potentially dangerous situations thinking they're actually cushy assignments. You'd think he'd know better by now.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu (Cain manages to defeat a full fledged daemon... with a little bit of help, of course. Not to mention defeating Chaos Space Marines in personal combat on two non-consecutive occasions - again, with a little help from his friends.)
    • Make that at least two daemons: one of his Noodle Incident references speaks of his "charging a daemon of Khorne with just a rusty bayonet and a vial of holy water."
    • Three daemons, according to Cain's Last Stand.
    • It's at least four if you count the time he called in a full artillery barrage and ran away as quickly as possible in the short story The Beguiling.
  • Dirty Business (There are numerous clues that Cain feels the sacrifices he makes more keenly than he lets on.)
  • Dirty Coward (Cain would be quite willing to sacrifice entire planets, let alone the people he actually serves with, to get away from the many dangers that he encounters. He is stopped only by the need to maintain his reputation, which has gained him many free meals and, as he put it, "nobleman's wine cellars and nobleman's daughters" to be worth it. That and in the long run, its safer since he's not going to get shot by his own men.)
    • Well, he says he'd be willing to sacrifice them. In The Traitor's Hand, Vail points out that when friendly troops were swarming an enemy tank, preventing Jurgen from taking a shot, it didn't even seem to cross Cain's mind to have Jurgen fire anyway; most commissars wouldn't have any qualms about their own troops being collateral damage.
    • He also presents a practical side to it. Another living person means that there's one more person to put between himself and the certain death that's likely to be following close behind. Nevertheless, we never see him using someone as a Human Shield. Whenever the fighting starts, he "accidentally" places himself in between his men and the enemy. Oh, he'll have an explanation. Something looked like an opening, he made some mistake, he was running from something else, he was in shock, etc. No matter how dangerous it is.
  • Dressing As The Enemy
  • Drink Order (Just about any time Cain mentions drinking something, it's credits to carrots that it's either (alcoholic) amasec or (non-alcoholic) tanna tea or recaff if there is no tanna around. He's a honorary Valhallan, after all, and no Valhallan could imagine a life without tea.)
    • Not surprising, as this is the British series and Valhallans are heavily based on Russians. Britain and Russia are the two most heavily tea-drinking countries in Europe.
    • Reaches borderline obsessive levels in Death or Glory where the lack of tanna, and Cain asking hopefully, "I don't suppose you've got any," becomes something of a Running Gag.
  • Driven To Suicide
  • Drives Like Crazy (Gunner Jurgen.)
  • Due To The Dead (In Caves of Ice, when they have to burn a body to keep the orks from realizing they're there, even Cain seems perturbed by it.)
  • Dumb Is Good (Gunner Jurgen; what intelligence he may lack is made up for by unyielding faith in the Emperor's will. Not to mention a pragmatic outlook along the lines of 'The Commissar is always right.')
    • It's questionable just how "dumb" Jurgen really is; he is remarkably insightful and his skill at scrounging is second to none. He is also extremely diligent and thorough; Caves of Ice even has a scene where he thinks so far ahead that he actually saved Cain's life by bringing along an extra pair of snow goggles, reasoning that Cain would forget them himself.
    • Not the sharpest tool in the shed, then, but undeniably talented where it counts.
    • The author has stated that Jurgen has a good claim to being the real hero of the stories, "if anyone ever noticed him."
  • Dungeon Bypass (Cain is on the receiving end of one of these in The Caves of Ice. Also, Jurgen's melta is frequently used for this.)
  • Dying As Yourself (Commissar Donal)
  • Earn Your Happy Ending, although we recognize it also depends of his luck.
  • Elite Mooks: The PDF in Cain's Last Stand.
  • Emotion Bomb (A psyker in Duty Calls uses despair, Slaaneshi cultists spread lust around wherever they are, and Necron pariahs are "shrouded in horror"...over and above the reasonable reaction to Necrons, that is.)
  • The Empire
  • Enemy Mine (In For The Emperor, Cain's recon team and a squad of Tau pathfinders briefly team up to scout out the terrorist base. Then they find a Bigger Fish and things get worse.)
  • Enemy Civil War
  • Ensign Newbie
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good
  • Exact Words (At the end of Cain's Last Stand, Cain lures Varan to a meeting to discuss "terms of surrender". At the meeting, he announces that it's to discuss the terms on which Varan surrenders.)
    • Mentioned further down the page, Cain does this again a few pages later by fulfilling Commissar Donal's final request, killing Varan by putting the boot to his ass.
  • Explosive Decompression (Notably averted in Death or Glory)
  • Expospeak (During a briefing in The Traitor's Hand, Cain gives a concise but informative discussion of the Chaos Gods, focusing on Khorne and Slaanesh as their minions are relevant to the story. Vail's footnotes, as well.)
  • Fake Ultimate Hero (of the IMPERIUM!)
  • False Flag Operation
  • Failed To Pay Shipping Charges (Either Cain was wrong when he described the Indestructible as an Armageddon-class battlecruiser in the beginning of The Traitor's Hand, or the book several excerpts are taken from is wrong describing it as a cruiser...perhaps understandably, as the Armageddon-class is usually a converted Lunar-class cruiser.)
    • The book is actually a naval history that focuses on the specifics of the classes of ships involved, so it is most likely his mistake.
      • We have to remember that there is much less difference between a cruiser and a battlecruiser or heavy cruiser in the Warhammer 40K universe. Slightly larger, a more powerful powergrid that increases broadside firepower and a pair of dorsal lance batteries. That's it. That it's possible to quickly convert a lunar class cruiser into an Armageddon class battlecruiser really says it all.
      • We also have to remember that Cain mentions repeatedly that he didn't care about the navy much and may simply have been uninterested in what he saw as minor details.
  • Famed In Story
  • A Father To His Men
  • Fearless Fool
  • Fetish Fuel (In Death or Glory, one of the members of Cain's small cobbled-together refugee convoy is a female member of the Adeptus Mechanicus who has a mechadendrite that attaches to the base of her spine. In other words, she has an Artificial Prehensile Tail...)
    • This is lampshaded by one of Vail's footnotes, wondering just how he knew where it was attached.
    "How Cain discovered this we can only speculate; perhaps it came up in the course of a casual conversation. Or not."
    • Several online 40K fetishes are made canon by Cain's Last Stand, namely that there are female Commissars and that Sisters of Battle are not required to be celibate.
  • Femme Fatale (Inquisitor Vail. Colonel Kasteen to a lesser extent.)
  • Fictional Document (The assorted outside sources Amberley sticks in to expand on Cain's narratives.)
  • Field Promotion (Cain hands these out in Death or Glory and Cain's Last Stand)
  • Fiery Redhead (Kasteen and Magot)
  • Fire Forged Friends (The entire Valhallan 597th in general. Kasteen and Broklaw in particular.)
  • First Name Basis
  • First Person Smartass
  • Five Rounds Rapid (Used word for word in The Traitor's Hand. Also said - by Cain himself - in For the Emperor when he thought Jurgen's melta would make too big a hole but two hellguns would be just right.)
    • Also, averted in the short story The Beguiling: faced with a daemon, he doesn't bother trying to use a normal gun, instead calling in a full artillery barrage on the location.
  • Footnote Fever: Each book contains about one footnote per five pages. In the foreword to the omnibus edition, Sandy Mitchell commented that the typesetters were very glad no other Black Library books had such footnotes.
  • For Doom The Bell Tolls: Cain alludes to the Bell of Lost Souls tolling for him. Vail assures the reader that it was just a soldier's figure of speech since he couldn't have expected it to ring for him — then.
  • Foregone Conclusion: Cain will live, to write his memoirs. Vail will live, to edit them.
    • We do know Jurgen died before Cain wrote one of the books, and so his survival in Cain's Last Stand, which takes place in the middle of the time period he wrote them in, was for once not assured.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Both literally and metaphorically, in that the Valhallan infantry Cain serves with in the first three books and Duty Calls are assigned to bases in cold, snowy environments three out of four times...which is just like home for them and frequently serves them in good stead.
    • Other instances, too - for example, it might go unnoticed on a first reading of The Traitor's Hand that Cain's nightmares only ever end when Jurgen comes to check on him. The thought that he might not have been able to wake up without a blank around makes it a lot more scary and Mind Rapey in retrospect.
  • A Friend In Need (Kasteen and Broklaw, at the end of Traitor's Hand)
  • Friend Or Foe
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: If you read in continuity order; an Internal Homage in publication order. In Death or Glory, Jurgen is mostly uninjured by a blow to the head, and Cain says, "It would probably take a bolter shell to crack that thick skull of his." In For the Emperor, Jurgen's skull is fractured near-fatally by...a bolter shell that glances off his helmet.
  • General Ripper: One set of excerpts is from a writer who blames everything on rogue traders.
  • Genius Bonus (Overlaps a lot with Shout Out; see below.)
  • Genki Girl: Of all possible people, Magos Felicia Tayber, an Adeptus Mechanius tech-priestess. Whom Cain may or may not have slept with.
  • Genre Savvy (Subverted; In For the Emperor, Cain guesses that the conspicuous rogue trader at the governor's fete is an inquisitor because, supposedly, all inquisitors use that disguise. Needless to say, he gets that one wrong.)
    • In Cain's defense, the person he says this to was an Inquisitor. You do not tell an Inquisitor that they need to work on their disguise better.
    • Also played straight in that he's usually right in his guesses and assumptions. Also, Vail does comment that the assumption that Cain made was usually correct, Inquisitors do use a certain disguise far too much.
    • And the trader does indeed have a connection to the Inquisition. He was in the ballpark, at least.
    • He's also got a preternatural ability to sense when he about to be sent somewhere extraordinarily dangerous. Of course, the frequency of him being sent...
      • Is there a place in the Warhammer40000 'verse that isn't extraordinarily dangerous?
  • Geo Effects
  • Glamorous Wartime Singer ( Amberley Vail's disguise when Cain first met her.)
  • Good Looking Privates: While Cain wouldn't be caught dead in the poses on the covers, it's implied his appearance is pretty accurate. Colonel Kasteen's pretty easy on the eyes, too.
  • The Greatest Story Never Told (The heroic exploits of Gunner Jurgen, acknowledged by few and told by none besides Cain himself.)
  • Hanging Separately
  • Happy Fun Ball: The Shadowlight. The core of it is naught but a slab of dark stone roughly the size of an Imperial data-slate. It's really a psychic power-boosting Artifact Of Doom.
  • Hard Head (Subverted, hard, in Duty Calls, where a minor concussion puts Cain out of commission for three days and enlivens his life with nausea and dizziness after. He plays it up and down according to what looks useful, and other character are anxious to remind him that he does not in fact have a Hard Head.)
  • The Hero {Both subverted and played straight; Cain spends a good chunk of his memoirs talking of his baser motivations and cowardice while everyone around him praises him as a great hero, due to the results of his selfish and cowardly actions.)
  • Heroes Want Redheads (Cain himself admits that he finds Colonel Kasteen, the red-haired colonel of the Valhallan 597th, to be quite attractive, but never follows up on it because of how that would complicate their working relationship. Also, in The Traitor's Hand, Commissar Tomas Beije seems to be assuming that Cain is having an inappropriate relationship with Corporal Magot, who is also a red-head. He's wrong of course, as Magot is apparently not interested in men and Cain already has one psychotically violent woman in his life.)
  • Heroic Sacrifice (Techpriest Killian saving Cain in Echoes of the Tomb.)
  • Heroic Self Deprecation (The only person in the Imperium who believes that Cain doesn't deserve to be called a hero is Cain himself.)
    • Well, Beije doesn't believe it either, but he's a Jerk Ass.
  • Hollywood History: A rare in-universe example, in Cain's Last Stand we find out that the way Cain's first fight on Perlia is remembered sixty years later is a heavily romanticized account. The main element of this is the idea that his force was mostly armed civilians, when they were actually a small group among many more professional soldiers. Another example from Perlia involves the new governor heroically defending her hunting cabin from an attack, ignoring the squad of stormtroopers that were assigned to guard her and did all the fighting. And of course, Jurgen is not mentioned in any of the histories Cain is featured in.
  • Human Shield (Cain's professed motive for saving many people is that they will be between him and the guns. This is subverted in Cain's Last Stand, where he thinks that everyone between him and Varan is one more person for Varan to turn against him.
  • Hypocritical Humor (Anything Beije says, ever.)
  • I Can Fight
  • I Know What We Can Do Cut (At the climax of Cain's Last Stand. Cain tells them what they can do, tells us that they opposed it, but does not tell the reader until he actually does it: he calls up Varan and proposes a meeting to discuss surrender terms.)
  • I Thought Everyone Could Do That (Cain briefly forgets that not everyone has his tunnel instincts in an early book.)
  • I Meant To Do That (Most notably in Fight or Flight.)
  • Improbable Aiming Skills (Lampshaded and subverted in the first novel, where Vail accuses Cain of "showing off" when he scores a headshot on an enemy Mook with his laspistol. He goes on to reveal that he was aiming for a torso shot and fired right when his target had ducked.)
    • Also played straight; Vail reveals in a footnote that Cain does possess an uncanny accuracy with a laspistol when firing at long-distance targets.
      • Cain often attributes this to his augmetic fingers, but no other character with augmetics seems to share this skill.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness
  • Indestructible Edible (Imperial ration bars: unknown composition, palatable only to the desperately starving, and capable of surviving some forms of Exterminatus.)
  • Indy Ploy (Cain pretty much makes everything up as he goes along, though he does try to plan to avoid getting into firefights and occasionally actually has a plan beyond "Get out alive", even if it rarely actually works out that way.)
  • In Harms Way (Not really, but if he doesn't pretend to love it, his reputation will be shot.)
  • In Its Hour Of Need
  • Innocent Fanservice Girl (Rakel the psyker is too crazy for ideas like modesty, and her attire is repeatedly described as inappropriately revealing. Most characters find the crazy too disturbing to appreciate it.)
  • In The Back
  • I Surrender Suckers (A variation in Cain's Last Stand.)
  • I Take Offense To That Last One (In reference to how to control a Tribunal other than bribery or threats, which he states would cause resentment from the Inquisitorial Department for muscling in their territory. Amberley reponds to this stating that the Inquisitors are not petty enough to resent things.)
  • It's All About Me (A repeated gripe about Cain's memoirs from Amberley)
  • Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique (Subverted in The Traitor's Hand, where the captured Slaaneshi cultists seem to actually be enjoying the treatment)
  • Kid Hero (In Cain's Last Stand, the students at the schola provide support.)
  • Kill Em All (While Cain has an outstanding track record of coming back from missions almost unscathed, very rarely do many of his squad survive.)
  • Kill It With Fire and Kill It With Water (The Salamander Cain often travels in is frequently equipped with a flamer. In Death or Glory, he takes out a large Ork army by destroying a dam.)
  • Kill Me Now Or Forever Stay Your Hand (In The Traitor's Hand, how he stopped Beije from trying to arrest him.)
  • Knight Templar (The Inquisitor in Duty Calls is willing to stage a massacre and hand over humans to be massacred by aliens on the ground that what he is protecting is too valuable for the information to get out. )
    • Played with in the same book. Certain Battle Sisters refuse to retreat to the line of their defenses because they must serve the Emperor; Cain finally points out that if the Tyranids outflank them, they will be responsible for the massacre of civilians in the Emperor's Temple. This not only persuades them to retreat, it causes one of them to thank him later, for reminding them of their duty, and admit that their zeal had lead them astray. Later this takes on a grimmer note. The sisters realize they have sheltered a renegade inquisitor. Even his deception does not ease their guilt; they realized their zeal had blinded them from seeing the facts. In atonement, they sacrifice their lives to ensure the escape of the Inquisitor who had told them the truth and her party.
  • Last Stand (Cain's gotten at least two of them in the same location.)
    • He does seem a bit annoyed that people keep calling them that.
  • Lawful Neutral (Jurgen follows any order he's given, even ones like "Get a Salamander and drive me as far away as possible")
  • Lighter And Softer (This is a comedy set in the Warhammer 40000 universe.)
  • Like A Badass Out Of Hell (Daemonized Emili)
  • Literal Minded (Jurgen)
  • Literary Agent Hypothesis (The series is presented as a group of extracts from Cain's memoirs edited by Inquisitor Vail.)
  • Little Did I Know (Practically Cain's catchphrase. Every book starts with a variation and he repeats it regularly.)
    • Almost to the point of annoyance for some readers (including this one) where he interrupts the action in order to comment about how he'd be "gibbering in terror" if he only knew about once a chapter.
  • Lord Error Prone (Sulla, at least from Cain's point of view. Slightly subverted in that she is competent and later becomes a legendary general, just one way too gung-ho for Cain's tastes.)
    • A straight example is Toren Divas, whose well-meaning enthusiasm gets Cain nearly killed at least three times that we know of.
  • Love At First Sight (Cain explicitly denies believing it before admitting that he can, decades later, remember every detail of the first time he saw Amberley Vail.)
  • Mad Bomber (Captain Federer, commander of the 597th's sappers, has quite a thing for big booms. Rumour has it that he was ejected from an Adeptus Mechanicus seminary because of it.)
  • Male Gaze (Actually saves Cain's life in Duty Calls.)
  • Malicious Slander (Stupid Beije.)
  • Manipulative Bastard (Cain, in the best possible way.)
  • Mauve Shirt (Several, most notably Sergeant Lustig, Penlan and Magot.)
  • Meaningful Name (Ciaphas and Cain are the names of well-known villains from The Bible. One possible translation of "Caiaphas", according to The Other Wiki, is "rock that hollows itself out").
    • The Single Issue Wonk who wrote that Fictional Document in For The Emperor is named Stententious Logar, a slight misspelling of a word meaning "addicted to pompous moralizing".
    • Inquisitor Vail's name could also be one; she is, after all, concealing ("veiling") Cain's true nature from the world at large.
  • Melee A Trois (As might be expected from him, Cain takes full advantage of this trope in The Traitors Hand when he needs to get past a barricaded group of Slaneeshi cultists guarding a Daemon summoning ritual. By luck a group of Chaos Space Marines in service to Khorne have the same goal and choose this exact moment to show up. Cain decides to hang back and let them break the barricade for him and distract the cultists. Unsurprisingly, Bejie calls him out on this and calls him a coward, to which he calmly suggests Bejie lead the way. Beije doesn't take him up on this offer.)
  • The Men First (Cain does this to inspire loyalty, which may extend his lifespan in battle.)
  • Military Moonshiner
  • Million To One Chance (Cain, and his reputation, practically live on this.)
    • It's not always GOOD examples either - in Caves of Ice, though it's not quite a million to one shot, the chance of Cain and his squad stumbling across a Necron tomb are pretty damn high
    • Justified later on. Cain determines that the Adeptus Mechanicus deliberately positioned the mining facility over the Necron tomb, so finding it was just a matter of time.
  • Mission Briefing (General Zyvan gives a few of these, as do Colonel Kasteen and other officers.)
  • Mistaken For Badass (Just mention any of his major exploits to him and this is the explanation you'll get from Cain.)
  • More Dakka (Cain insists on having a pintel-mounted heavy bolter put on any Salamander that he uses, if one isn't already mounted. They tend to get used a lot.)
  • More Expendable Than You (Cain's professed motivation in his very first adventure. Also inverted in that Cain's true intentions were exactly the opposite.)
    • Brought up in The Traitor's Hand, when Cain claims that the Imperium needs it's generals but they can always get another Commissar. Zyvan disagrees: "Not like you, Ciaphas," a comment which genuinely surprises Cain.
  • New Meat (Referred to as "fungs", for FN Gs (Frakking New Guys))
  • The Neidermeyer (Assidiously averted by Cain; played to the hilt by Beije.)
  • No Hero To His Valet (Amberley Vail's association with Cain has let her see the accuracy of his accounts, even though she thinks he may be too hard on himself.)
    • But he is actually a hero to Jurgen, the closest thing to an actual valet he has.
  • The Nondescript (Malden in The Traitor's Hand)
  • Noodle Incident (Cain makes frequent cryptic references to his earlier adventures; some have been explored in short stories, others it is assumed the reader would have heard about.)
    • Cain's Last Stand has a ton of these due to being written well into the future of the series.
  • No Ontological Inertia (Averted, and specifically discussed in Cain's Last Stand. The people Varan controlled remain warped even after his death. Cain observes it would have been easier if they had been freed — "but this wasn't some comforting fairy tale....")
    • In one rather extreme case, Varan's personal shuttle pilot was found dead after the final battle. He had been ordered by (the now deceased) Varan to wait for his return. The pilot took these orders literally and starved to death waiting for Varan.
  • No Time To Think (During the Wire Dilemma, he is forced to guess because all the wires are the same color.)
  • Not Quite Dead (A footnote in one of the books reveals that Cain has been listed as "killed in action" so many times that the Munitorum eventually gave up trying to keep track and decided to keep him on the payroll regardless - even long past his confirmed death.)
    • And burial with full military honors.
  • No Except Yes (Cain doesn't "charge the enemy." He "retreats forwards.")
  • Obfuscating Stupidity ( Governor Grice in For the Emperor; everyone thinks that he's merely a puppet being controlled by the Tau, but he's really a member of the Genestealer cult that thrives in Gravalax's underground, which is trying to play the Tau and the Imperium against each other to soften them up for the coming wave of Tyranid invasions. Also Inquisitor Vail when she first appears.)
  • Obstructive Bureaucrat (both played straight and subverted in The Caves of Ice.)
    • Amusingly subverted in The Traitor's Hand, where the Council of Claimants unwittingly votes itself out of the loop.
    • Also subverted in Cain's Last Stand with Bursar Brasker, who's also been using Obfuscating Stupidity "to conform to other people's expectations" and turns out to be something of a kindred spirit to Cain.
    • Scrivener Norbert from Death Or Glory is an actual helpful bureaucrat who never even acts obstructive. I may faint from shock.
  • Old Retainer
  • Painting The Fourth Wall (The shadowlight from Duty Calls is so ominous, it's never referred to with a capital letter and always in italics.)
  • Parental Abandonment (Prerequisite for becoming a commissar. Vail does wonder how true his story is, though, as Cain is an (admitted) nearly pathological liar prone to manipulating others.)
  • Percussive Maintenance (Apparently the most reliable way to fix the resolution on a hololith. If you're particularly good at it, it may mean you have a religious (i.e., techpriest) vocation.)
  • Phobia Cain has a fairly consistent fear of the Necrons that goes beyond the fear of simply facing them in battle.
    • Do you blame him fearing omnicidal, souless shells that can flay you down to you component atoms and are extremely difficult thus far utterly impossible to kill fully? (They're extremely difficult just to take down in the fight at hand; but even once they're dropped, they teleport back home and will be back in a later battle.)
      • You could just say he's one of the few who actually understands how much they should be feared, since they're portrayed in the series as all but unstoppable. This Troper has theorized that Sandy Mitchell is a hardcore Necron player.
      • Seeing how Cain has faced Greater Daemons and Hive Tyrants in hand to hand, and doesn't fear them as much as the 'Crons, I'll say so.
    • Cain also fears the Dark Eldar, often cringing from remembering the time he spent as a prisoner in a Reaver.
  • Pillow Pistol (Cain keeps his laspistol under his pillow wherever he sleeps — and Amberley assures us that this is wherever. Considering the universe, this is quite justified.)
  • The Pirates Who Dont Do Anything (Ciaphas is The Commissar Who Doesn't Shoot His Men Very Often. Justified by his recognising that it prevents them shooting him "accidentally" and thus removing one possible threat to his life.)
  • Plague Of Good Fortune (Cain's entire career can pretty much be summed up as a repeating cycle of "Be thrust into danger" --> "Find greater danger while trying to escape first danger" --> "Become praised as a hero for defeating new danger." Naturally, as his fame increases, so do others' expectations of him, much to his chagrin.)
  • Playing Possum (Cain uses a variation (with himself as the bait) in The Caves of Ice in order to ambush an Ork advance party and keep them from reporting the Valhallans' landing to the main horde.)
  • Politically Incorrect Villain (Beije is a textbook case of a minor character who goes from a minor obstacle for the heroes to deeply unlikeable after spouting off at the mouth.)
  • Power Nullifier (As a blank, Jurgen often serves this role.)
  • Power Of Trust (Cain uses this on Kolfax in Death Or Glory)
  • Pre Mortem One Liner (Replete with them, usually right before Cain kills someone with his laspistol.)
    • "Sorry. I prefer blondes."
    • "Blood for the Blood God!" "Harriers for the cup!"
    • "Impersonating an inquisitor is a capital offense."
    • "Commissar Donal sends his regards."
      • Especially appropriate in that, as he said it, he was doing exactly what Donal had, as his last request, asked Cain to do. "Kick his arse for me." Let us reiterate: Cain killed a man by kicking him in the arse...with the help of a large drop. Not just any man either, but a Chaos warmaster.
    • Subverted in Duty Calls. "Enjoy your trip."
  • Psycho Lesbian (Magot, but in a good way as long as you don't threaten Grifen.)
  • Punny Name (Several planets, including the ice worlds Simia Orichalchae and Nusquam Fundumentibus (respectively, pseudo-Latin for Brass Monkey and Without Arses). Also, Sodallagain.)
    • In Cain's Last Stand. Orelius's ship is revealed to be the Lucre Foedus. Quite appropriate for a Rogue Trader.
  • Purple Prose (The excerpts from Sulla's books, which Vail apologizes for each time she has to add them.)
  • Ragtag Bunch Of Misfits (The penal squad in the first book. Not to mention the rest of the 597th Valhallan, at least at first. As well as Cain's Liberators from Death or Glory, who start out as just a squad of PDF and a few dozen civilians and end up with a few hundred troops and everything a mobile army needs but air support. Perhaps the most impressive is Vail's retinue in Duty Calls. Faced with a food vendor who had stumbled into some knowledge of the Inquisition — and picked up a gun when cornered by a Chaos cult — Vail hires her. Others include a former commissar/member of a penal regiment, and a former arbite who had, while undercovered, imploded a criminal organization with a judicious murder and frame.)
  • Ramming Always Works (Attempted by one of the other Schola teachers in Cain's Last Stand. It works, destroying the ram and the ship it hit, but it didn't destroy the ship they had hoped to.)
  • Recurring Dreams
  • Redshirt Army (Both subverted and played straight: The books seem to take delight in never having the escorts' survival - or their total wipeout - taken for granted. Played straight and lampshaded in the short story Echoes of the Tomb where the redshirts were troopers of the Adeptus Mechanicus - and they wore red uniforms. They're even called redshirts by Cain. And, despite cybernetic augmentations and hellguns, they are all slaughtered when the Necrons wake up.)
  • Refuge In Audacity (Cain uses this sort of logic to justify some of his more apparently "heroic" actions - confronting dangerous threats, while seemingly suicidal at the time, has a much better chance (he claims) of ensuring his survival in the long term than running away and allowing them to grow even more dangerous. Not to mention adding to his reputation for heroism.)
    • For instance, the time in Death or Glory when he wanted transportation for the PDF squad he intended to use as bodyguards. He had them sneak into the enemy motor park quietly, while he barged in the front gate and started singlehandedly shooting the place up as a distraction (Jurgen was busy starting up the vehicles they'd take).
    • Cain's plan for taking out the big bad in Cain's Last Stand runs on this and I Surrender Suckers.
  • Retired Badass (Cain in Cain's Last Stand, along with all the other schola instructors.)
  • Revealing Coverup (in Duty Calls)
  • Robo Speak (Lampshaded in Cain's Last Stand, where he actually uses a trio of combat servitors' tendency to repeat their directives out loud to track their locations)
  • Serious Business (Among the Valhallans, snow-sculpting, snow forts, snowball fights...pretty much anything involving snow and/or the killing of Orks.)
  • Ship Tease (Some of the later interactions between Kasteen and Broklaw seem to indicate that they've taken a liking to each other. Cain Josses any such implication between himself and Kasteen...assuming that he's telling the truth and Cain was the one who actually wrote that bit.)
  • Shout Out (Enough to make your throat sore.)
    • At least one footnote in one of the books makes a reference to a certain individual who held the dual rank of Colonel-Commissar for a number of years. There are also a number of shoutouts to other media; one in particular that comes to mind is "the Nuns of Gavaronne," though never explicitly called such, in Duty Calls.
    • Jurgen the sidekick is perhaps the most obvious; he is drawn from GM Fraser's other famous character (besides Flashman), Private Mc Auslan of the Gordon Highlanders. AKA The Dirtiest Soldier in the British Army and the Highland Division's answer to Peking Man. To give him credit, however, Jurgen only borrows Mc Auslan's gruesome appearance and scent; he appears to be much smarter (and, without a Scots accent, is also more understandable).
      • Another borrowing from Fraser's writings may be a brief mention of Dark Eldar "reivers," an obsolete word likely borrowed from Fraser's History of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers.
    • Imperial ration packs of "Soylens Viridians" had this troper in stitches.
    • The villain Ernst Stavros Killian made this troper chuckle.
    • "We have to call in the Navy to sterilize the whole site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
    • "You may take our planet, but you'll never take our freedom!" The fact that the man who says it was wearing blue facepaint at the time was icing on the cake.
    • From an extract, Cain's Heroes, the holodrama based on Cain's actions in Death or Glory.
      • Hmmmm. Are we sure that's not supposed to refer to Kelly's Heroes instead, considering the movie, like Death or Glory, is about a small operation that snowballs?
    • Captain (later Fleet Admiral) Horatio Bugler, mentioned in Vail's footnotes.
    • "The Imperium Never Sleeps", the catchphrase of popular holodrama character Arbitrator Foreboding, who, in the words of Inquisitor Vail, "hunts aliens, mutants, and heretics with relish and a very big gun".
    • "Big red thing! Five rounds rapid!"
      • Used twice in The Traitors Hand and at least once in Cain's Last Stand.
    • Death Or Glory: "Wahoo, I got one!" "Great, don't get cocky!"
    • "Open Channel D." There's also references on two occasions to Inquisitor Kuryakin.
    • "I love the smell of promethium in the morning", as a Guardsman is quoted saying in one of Sulla's memoir extracts in For The Emperor.
    • Caves of Ice: "They can't be reasoned with, they can't be intimidated, and if they have the numbers on their side they simply can't be stopped."
    • From Caves of Ice again: Fear is the mind killer. (Part of the Catechisms of Command.)
    • Caves of Ice, yet again: "If it bleeds, we can kill it".
    • Heavy usage of the word "frak" comes to mind, too.
    • Another to 'Gaunts Ghosts; also possibly a Take That. In The Traitor's Hand: "'Come on, men! Do you want to live forever!' The noncom in charge of the squad must have been on something, I thought. Nobody spoke like that outside of badly-written combat novels." Or, in other words, Ibram Gaunt's Catch Phrase.
      • Duty Calls also has a limosine with a cabinet made of naalwood, native to Tanith. Cain remarks this probably cost more than the dropship that brought him down to the planet. No wonder - keep in mind, the Cain books are set in the 900.M41/00.M42 era, while the Gaunts Ghosts books are set in the 700.M41 era and feature the Tanith First And Only for a very good reason.
      • The Tanith First is also referenced in For The Emperor, in a footnote listing notable mixed-gender regiments.
      • Cain's Last Stand features a retired Guard veteran who repeatedly lets out a war cry of "Give them the straight silver!" echoing the Tanith Ghosts' order to fix bayonets with their distinctive "straight silver" warknives.
      • In addition to the straight silver reference his general speech patterns (as well as his age and membership in the militia) are reminiscent of Corporal Jones from Dad's Army
    • An extended one: in Duty Calls, the plateau of Aceralbaterra on the planet Periremunda. Aceralbaterra is "High Gothic" for "Maple White Land," the name given the plateau in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Periremunda translates as "Lost World," and the planet, after being discovered by Acer Alba, was rediscovered by Magos Provocare (which could be translated as Professor Challenger). Just to rub it in, the principal settlement on Aceralbaterra is Konnandoil, and "the locals imported thousands of sauropods from Harihowzen." The author was clearly having a lot of fun with this one. This troper is still snickering about it, too.
    • One of the chapter quotes from The Traitor's Hand: "If you don't expect gratitude you'll seldom be disappointed." - Eyor Dedonki, Memoirs of a Pessimist. 479.M41
    • It's been mentioned in Death or Glory that The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round The Tracks of the Land Raider Crush the Heretics is a very popular preschool song.
    • In Duty Calls, Cain mentions in passing a Space Marine armorer/mechanic named Tobamorie. The children's series ''The Wombles'' includes a mechanic-type named Tobermory.
      • Add to this that the chapter uses Corvus-pattern armour, which features a helmet with a distinctly beaky appearance: called womble-marines by many.
    • In Duty Calls Jurgan reads from the Book of Armaments. This is the same game system that has a Holy Orb of Antioch grenade for one of the factions.
    • The nauga, whose hides are durable and often found in doctor's waiting rooms.
    • Cain's fencing instructor at the Schola Progenium was a certain Miyamoto de Bergerac.
    • According to her savant in For the Emperor, Amberley once...investigated the 'heretics of Ghore.' This is probably a reference to John Norman's Gor novels, which had titles of that format.
    • What? Not one mention of "WAAAGH! and Peace" yet?
    • One of the stormtroopers in Caves of Ice is named Hastur. Unlike his namesake Eldritch Abomination, the soldier of that name is a quick victim of the Necrons.
      • However, his name is mentioned exactly three times in the text before said victimization...
      • Incorrect. His name is mentioned five times. However, he only speaks three times. And the moment he's spoken the third time, he's disemboweled and skinned by a Flayed One.
    • Auspex (radar) operator Orrily in Death or Glory might be a corruption of O'Reilly. Supported by mention that he wore "small round eyeglasses." Served under Lt. Piers (close to Pierce) alongside vox operator Marquony.
    • The badass vet Ariott, who got to be the team's medic in Death or Glory, is a clear send-up to the no less badass Real Life vet and writer James Alf Wight, better known under his pen name of James Herriot.
    • In Duty Calls, there is a certain Pontius, pilot by trade.
    • In a wave to the origin of the Flashman stories (a book titled Tom Brown's Schooldays), in The Traitor's Hand an old schoolfellow of Cain's is named Tomas Beije.
    • From Cain's Last Stand: The Fungoid Menace: Orkish Physiology and its Implications by Migo Yuggoth. Bonus points for the Migo being themselves fungus.
    • Amberley's rendezvous with Orelius is at void station Delta Sigma Novem. Remember that November was originally the ninth month.
    • In The Beguiling there is the Saint Trynia Academy for the Daughters of Gentlefolk. All things considered, what happens is pretty accurate if said school was transported several thousand years into the future.
      • The title may refer to the Clint Eastwood movie The Beguiled, which also involved a soldier and a girls' school.
    • In Cain's Last Stand, there is a ship called "Trespassers William". Yes, this book has a Shout Out to Winnie The Pooh. (In addition to the Eeyore reference above.)
    • In Duty Calls, Amberley's car is a flying D'Lorien. (Yes, we know, the spelling is a bit off.)
    • There's an extended Shout Out to Dad's Army in Cain's Last Stand, with the officer in charge going by the name of Manrin after Captain Mainwaring (who keeps the 'stupid boy' catchphrase), Corporal Jaq as an excitable ex-trooper, after Corporal Jones, and Franka for Private Pike, who still uses 'but my mum says' as an excuse for everything (although Franka is female).
    • And another "book title" one — Duty Calls features excerpts from a book on the Tyranid wars of the time called The Abominable Chitin. Seems odd, right? Well, until you remember that, besides Peter Pan, J M Barrie wrote a (very funny) play called "The Admirable Crichton."
    • In Caves Of Ice the tech priest Logash rebuffs Cain's attempt to gain entry into a restricted area with "That would be an ecumenical matter."
    • From For The Emperor: 'The Emperor points and we obey / Through the Warp and far away' is a possible Sharpe reference.
    • Enginseer Felicia Tayber complaining that "I can't change the laws of theology" in Death or Glory.
    • One of the sources of supplemental excerpts in Cain's Last Stand is historian Ayjaepi Clothier, an obvious reference to controversial real-life historian A.J.P. Taylor.
    • The statement "I can always get another techpriest...but there's only one psychic enhancer" in Duty Calls clearly refers to The Maltese Falcon.
  • Shrouded In Myth (Cain is one of these in the Warhammer 40K world; whenever he downplays his accomplishments, most people think that it's out of modesty. One religious sect has even proclaimed him to be a physical manifestation of the God-Emperor's Divine Will. Vail playfully points out that Cain would be absolutely horrified if he ever learned about said religious sect.)
    • The people of Perlia have elevated Cain so high on the hero scale that they actually built a gigantic (and hideous) mechanical clock in the planetary capital that tells time by having a commissar appear and lop off the heads of a number of orks equal to the hour. When the capital is bombarded, Cain asks hopefully if the clock has been destroyed.
  • Shrouded In Mystery (Despite frequent mention of his childhood being spent in a Hiveworld, no one actually knows where he was born or anything signifigant about his past prior to becoming a Commissar. He claims at one point that Kroot killed his parents, but Vail points out inconsistencies in his statement and then shrugs it off as unconfirmable.)
  • Shrug Of God (Sandy Mitchell says he doesn't know whether Cain is the Dirty Coward he claims to be, or selling himself short.)
  • Sidekick (Gunner Ferik Jurgen, even if every history about Cain's adventures but his own leaves him out entirely. A fact which Cain reputedly hated, as evidenced by his disdain for the holodrama Cain's Heroes, about his adventures in Death Or Glory, which left Jurgen and several other vital characters out completely.)
    • Sidekick Ex Machina (Jurgen's "blank" talents are used to spectacular effect by Cain throughout the series.)
  • Single Biome Planet (The Valhallans are ice-worlders and have a habit of setting their air-conditioning to levels that makes the breath visible. Being assigned to Simia Orichalcae, the iceworld in Caves of Ice, brings them evident joy.)
  • Slave To PR ((Supposedly) one of the few reasons why Cain doesn't chicken out at the first opportunity is that doing so would cause him to lose his reputation as a Hero of the Imperium, with all the benefits that brings.)
  • Snowball Fight
  • So Proud Of You
  • Sour Supporter: Kolfax in Death or Glory
  • Spot Of Tea (Valhallans really love their tanna, and so does Cain. Amberley tried it once, and was diplomatic about loathing it.)
  • The Squadette (The Valhallan 597th regiment Cain finds himself working with in the novels contains remnants from the all-female Valhallan 296th.)
  • The Stoic: Jurgen fits this trope well. Also, Malden the Psyker, from the third book.
  • Stylistic Suck (The novels, presented as being the unpublished memoirs of Cain himself, feature extracts from the memoirs of Sulla; where Cain's are erudite and well-written, Sulla lacks any literary talent and fills her own with dreadful nonsense and Purple Prose. For The Emperor also features extracts from Purge the Heretics, most notable for its author's overwhelming hatred of rogue traders (he blames them for everything). For Death and Glory, set before Cain joined Sulla's regiment, we have the memoirs of Sergeant Tayber, which are nearly as unreadable. It is hinted that Cain's own official memoirs fall under this trope.)
  • Sword And Gun (Laspistol and a chainsword.)
  • Tall Dark And Handsome / Tall Dark And Snarky (Cain passes himself off as the former in public but is at heart the latter, as his memoirs amply demonstrate.)
  • Talking In Your Dreams
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill (At one point in The Traitor's Hand, a World Eater Chaos Marine gets killed "with satisfying thoroughness" by two krak missiles and a lascannon blast, any individual one of which would be enough on its own.)
  • Think Nothing Of It (Cain disclaims his own heroism, frequently, being aware that it will add the charm of modesty to his legend, and occasionally in an unsuccessful attempt to let him get by them and do something else. Sometimes, he is actually annoyed that Jurgen gets none of the credit he deserves, with all of it going to Cain.)
  • Title Drop ("Cain's Last Stand" is used several times, as its the name of one of the battles of his early career, the site of which he returns to in order to make another stand. Another character remarks on this, saying most people only get one of those.)
  • Too Dumb To Fool (Jurgen, sometimes.)
  • Trapped Behind Enemy Lines (The plot of Death Or Glory.)
  • Tsundere (Sulla, in For The Emperor, goes from showing oposition and dislikement of Cain's decisions on the regiment in front of other officials to eventually ask privately him in a rather nervous and shy way for a chance to show her value as a soldier. Cain of course takes the oportunity to act magnanimously, and get one more person disposed to cover his back, which make Sulla all the happier.)
  • Unreliable Narrator (Cain tends to leave out anything that doesn't directly affect him, so Vail has to use other sources, including (much to her annoyance) the memoirs of Jenit Sulla. See Stylistic Suck. Cain is also unreliable because he actually sells himself far too short, according to pretty much every character other than himself (including the erudite and perceptive Amberley Vail). He seems incapable of crediting himself for anything.)
    • This becomes more interesting when the reader realizes Cain is writing his memoirs not out of any delusions of their actually being published, but seemingly almost as a form of expiation. He admits that he can't really confess openly to a lot of his perceived faults, since his own reputation has trapped him, and he hasn't seen a priest for confession since he graduated the schola. In other words, the memoirs can almost be seen as one vast act of self-accusation, and thus are even less reliable in painting a true picture of the man's qualities.
    • There's also the strong possibility that Vail has edited his memoirs with regards to their own relationship. It's unlikely that she's actually trying to cover up their romance, given what she says in some of her own footnotes, but nobody would blame her for keeping the details private.
  • Unequal Pairing (See UST below)
  • Unfriendly Fire (Cain's main justification for treating the troopers well is avoiding this. He also suspects Colonel Mostrue, his first commander, of attempting The Uriah Gambit from time to time.)
    • In Duty Calls, he comes to suspect that some of the PDF did try this. He's right - and they had orders.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension (Cain is both attracted to and intimidated by Vail. In her footnotes, Vail acknowledges and is amused by the UST but her feelings about the matter remain unspecified... or not; a vast amount of evidence indicates it was resolved, and Vail just prefers to keep it private.)
  • The Vamp (Emeli.)
  • Weapon Of Choice (Jurgen's meltagun; Cain's chainsword and laspistol.)
    • In the first book, Cain declines to replace his familiar laspistol with a more powerful hellpistol, because he's afraid that the extra weight would throw off his aim.
  • What The Hell Hero (Cain gets one of these moments at the end of For The Emperor, when he executes two Guard troopers - the only survivors of a "special mission" other than himself and Inquisitor Vail - without forewarning or explanation. As the rest soon discover - and confirming Cain's unvoiced hunch - the two executed troopers turn out to be carrying Genestealer implants.)
  • Why Did It Have To Be Necrons? (Necrons are to Cain what snakes are to Indiana Jones, and with good reason)
  • Wire Dilemma (In The Traitor's Hand)
  • Woman Scorned (Taken to extremes in a manner only the 40K universe could in the third novel.)
  • Wouldnt Hit A Girl (The Tallarns in The Traitor's Hand)
    • To the surprise of exactly no-one but the Tallarns and their commissar, the girl goes after him at the first opportunity.
    • He then gets in troble because Magot has a higher rank than him, really.
      • And, to the surprise of no one, Magot easily beats the warp out of the Tallarns' best fighter.
  • You Are In Command Now
  • You Killed My Father (Cain, to the kroot. Only an allusion, not leading to Revenge.)
    • This also may have simply been a lie as well, strengthened by the following footnote mentioning that Amberly still couldn't find any confirmation of Cain's actual past and that he is exceptionally skilled at manipulating people.
  • Your Favorite
Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant
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